Researching Africa? Explore new resources @UniofEdinburgh

Posted on June 12, 2014 by spslibrarian

Here at the University of Edinburgh Library we’re developing our digital resources for African Studies.

New this month is trial access to two new online resources for African Studies – Africa Yearbook Online and African Studies Companion Online They are both published by Brill, and the trial period ends 1st July 2014. Trial access is available via http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-trials. Please tell us what you think as this helps us make a case for purchase.

We recently upgraded our online subscription to Africa Confidential, a hugely important source of information for researchers interested in what is going on in contemporary Africa. Current stories feature the first steps by new Egyptian President El Sisi, and developments in a Red Sea Missile drama between Sudan and Iran. You can find Africa Confidential on the library catalogue or via the E-journals A-Z list.

We’re continuing to build our e-book collections in Africa Studies. Titles purchased recently include:

Inside African Anthropology [electronic resource] : Monica Wilson and her Interpreters. Volume 0. / Edited by Andrew Bank, Leslie J. Bank CUP 2013 - e-book

Inside African Anthropology [electronic resource] : Monica Wilson and her Interpreters. Edited by Andrew Bank, Leslie J. Bank CUP 2013 – e-book

AIDS and religious practice in Africa [electronic resource] / edited by Felicitas Becker and P. Wenzel Geissler. Brill 2009 ebook

Christine Love-Rodgers, Academic Support Librarian – SPS

Fitba’ crazy, fitba’ mad? A football inspired reading list

Posted on June 11, 2014 by spslibrarian

The World Cup kicks off tomorrow in Brazil and we’ve pulled together just a small number of the e-books currently available to staff and students of the University in the Library’s collections that look at different aspects of the beautiful (or not so beautiful) game.

The Global Football League: Transnational Networks, Social Movements and Sport in the New Media Age by Peter Millward addresses the themes that have come to define the global flow of images, capital and people that exist in contemporary football today, including case studies on Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City football clubs.

Foreign Players and Football Supporters: The Old Firm, Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain by David Ranc looks at supporters’ reactions to the increase in the number of foreign players in the clubs they support. It concentrates on three case studies on Glasgow (Celtic and Rangers), Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal in London and the book charts the evolution of the link between supporters and club between 1995 and today.

Organisation and Governance of Top Football Across Europe : An Institutional Perspective aims to provide an extensive overview of how football is organised and managed on a European level and in individual European countries, and to account for the evolution of the national, international and transnational management of football over the last decades.

Football’s Dark Side: Corruption, Homophobia, Violence and Racism in the Beautiful Game by Ellis Cashmore and Jamie Cleland aims to express the views of thousands of football fans on the game they love, but which they know has an unpleasant underside demonstrating that beyond football’s assumed social value, the glamour and the spectacle an array of serious problems and exclusions endure.

An ethnography of English football fans: Cans, cops and carnivals by Geoff Pearson is based upon sixteen years observation of English football fans who travel home and away with their team – Manchester United, Blackpool and the England national team. The book challenges a number of the myths about hooliganism and crowd control and describes the interpretations, motivations and behaviour of these groups of fans both at home and abroad.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science

Better together or better apart? Some useful resources on the Scottish referendum.

Posted on June 4, 2014 by spslibrarian

On the 18^th September 2014 Scotland will vote yes or no to independence. There are a wealth of online resources available that can help with your research or help to inform your vote on the 18^th September and here are just a small number that you may find useful.

Referendum on Independence Key Texts has been put together by the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) and is intended to be useful to those seeking information on the Referendum on Independence for Scotland, and on the debate around the Referendum. Every effort is made to ensure that both sides of the debate (and neutral commentators) are covered. It is not an exhaustive resource and does not include material from the media e.g. BBC, newspapers, etc., or personal blogs, twitter, etc., however, there are a wide range of resources covered. Continue reading →

European Parliament elections 2014 – suggested resources for your research

Posted on May 20, 2014 by spslibrarian

Voting will take place in the UK on Thursday 24th May for the European Parliament elections 2014. If you are thinking of voting or interested in doing research in this area then you may find some of these resources useful.

Library Resources

These are mostly resources that have been subscribed to by the Library and are only available to staff and students at University of Edinburgh. You can use these to find newspaper articles and commentaries, academic literature, background reading and documentaries and news programmes.

ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts)
Provides abstracts from around 650 UK, US and international journals. Coverage includes all branches of the applied social sciences, with over 375,000 records.

Box of Broadcasts
As mentioned in a previous blog post, this service is a bit like BBC iPlayer but offers much, much more. The service allows you to record and catch-up on missed programmes, schedule recordings, edit programmes into clips, search for recordings already made by other users, etc. Includes 60+ TV and radio channels.

European Sources Online
European Sources Online (ESO) is an online database and information service which provides access to information on the institutions and activities of the European Union, the countries, regions and other international organisations of Europe, and on issues of importance to European researchers, citizens and stakeholders.

Factiva (off-campus access available via VPN)
Provides full-text access to a large number of UK newspapers as well as full-text access to a significant range of international newspapers and news sources.

IBSS (International Bibliography of Social Science)
Produced by the British Library of Political and Economic Science. One of the largest and most comprehensive social sciences databases in the world, indexing 2600 journals and 6000 books per annum, in the core disciplines of economics, sociology, politics and anthropology.

Lexis Library and Nexis UK (off-campus access by clicking on Login via Academic Sign In and UK federation)
Lexis Library includes full-text access to the vast majority of UK broadsheet and tabloid newspapers and a large number of local papers. Nexis UK provides full-text access to a large number of international newspapers and news sources.

Web of Science Core Collection, including Social Sciences Citation Index
One of the biggest online abstracting and indexing databases. Contains citations and abstracts to millions of journal articles and conference proceedings from all subjects. Impact factors, h-indexes and email alerts available.

The LSE Review of Books has suggested some books related to the European Parliament elections. You can see the full list on their blog but the following are available at the Library, just search the Library Catalogue for the title or author:

How Europe Shapes British Public Policy by Janice Morphet
Lobbying in the European Union: Interest groups, lobbying coalitions, and policy change by Heike Kluver
The Democratic Foundations of Policy Diffusion: How health, family and employment laws spread across countries by Katerina Linos
Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and discourse, edited by Ruth Wodak, Majid KhsraviNik and Brigitte Mral.

Tip: An easy way to find other books on similar subject areas is to click on the “Subjects” listed in the Catalogue record or for print books you can also click on the Shelfmark.

Freely available online resources

These are just a small number of online resources available:

European Parliament site for the elections
European Parliament/Information Office in the United Kingdom
PollWatch2014
BBC News
EuroVote
London School of Economics EUROPP blog

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science

New e-resources trials available

Posted on May 13, 2014 by spslibrarian

The Library has set up trial access to a number of online resources that may be useful for those studying politics and international relations. These include:

Declassified Documents Reference System
Allows researchers to easily and quickly access and review selected previously classified government documents. This digital collection fills an important gap in post-World War II domestic and foreign policy studies and provides unique opportunities for undergraduate and graduate comprehensive research in a rich primary source. In addition, it provides basic research for journalism, public policy studies, international law and security, and other disciplines. Available until 9th June 2014

Peace Research Abstracts
Includes bibliographic records covering essential areas related to peace research, including conflict resolution, international affairs, peace psychology, and other areas of key relevance to the discipline. The index contains more than 267,000 records which are carefully selected from the most important sources within the discipline, such as: Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Conflict Resolution, International Journal of Refugee Law, etc. Available until 12th June 2014

Yearbook of International Organizations Online
Compiled by the UIA (Union of International Associations) the Yearbook of International Organizations Online is the most comprehensive reference work and information resource on international non-profit organizations and associations worldwide. The Yearbook includes detailed descriptions of international organizations, and also includes relationships and cross-links with other listed international organizations. In addition, biographical information is provided on principal officers, as well as bibliographical information on the organization’s main publications and information services. Available until 9th June 2014.

Congressional Record 1789-1997
ProQuest Congressional is a comprehensive resource for all congressional activities, providing users access to the most comprehensive collection of historic and current congressional information available anywhere online. Available until 5th June 2014

Armed Conflict Database (ACD)
ACD monitors armed conflicts worldwide, focusing on political, military and humanitarian trends in current conflicts, whether they are local rebellions, long-term insurgencies, civil wars or inter-state conflicts. Available until 11th June 2014

PAIS International
This resource covers issues in the public debate through selective coverage of a wide variety of international sources including journal articles, books, government documents, statistical directories, grey literature, research reports, conference papers, web content, and more. PAIS International is the current file covering 1972 to present. Available until 13th June 2014.

Europa World Plus
Europa World Plus is the online version of the Europa World Year Book and the nine-volume Europa Regional Surveys of the World series. First published in 1926, the year book is renowned as one of the world’s leading reference works, covering political and economic information in more than 250 countries and territories. Available until 22nd June 2014.

These can all be accessed via the E-resources trials website: www.ed.ac.uk/is/databases-trials

There are feedback forms available and we would welcome feedback as this a key part of making a case to subscribe to resources like these.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science

Study space during exams

Posted on April 23, 2014 by spslibrarian

Need help finding study space?

In order to help ease pressure on study spaces in the Main Library during the exam period, Information Services (IS), EUSA and the University central room bookings team have worked together to identify alternative study spaces in the Central Area.

The map includes information on how far each alternative study space is from the Main Library and also information on opening hours, what kind of study space is available, if pcs and/or cloud printing is available, etc. These spaces are all available from 21 April-9 May 2014, with access to the libraries and open access computing labs mentioned available outwith this period as well.

*The extra study space in the David Hume Tower (DHT) is being opened on weekend of Saturday 3 and Sunday 4 May, 9am-9pm. See map for room details.*

You can access the map at http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/students/study-space

The map is also on display in the concourse of the Main Library as you come through the entrance gates (next to the plasma screen).

Outwith the central area there are other site libraries with study space available. You can find a full list of site libraries at http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/library-locations

Remember there is a free shuttle bus service that runs between the Central Area and King’s Buildings (KB) campus during semester Mon-Fri 8.18am-6.25pm. Shuttle bus timetable: http://www.ed.ac.uk/staff-students/students/shuttlebus

The Main Library is open as always 7.30am-2.30am seven days a week and during revision and exam periods there are restrictions placed on external reference/consultation users access to the building during the day, to ensure that optimal study space is available to University of Edinburgh students.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science.

Searching Searcher – discovering the Library’s resources

Posted on April 6, 2014 by spslibrarian

Do you want to be able to find books, articles and other material using one search? Do you want to find material the University of Edinburgh Library owns in its collections or subscribes to online? Are you looking to use a variety of different information sources?

Searcher may be exactly what you are looking for.

Searcher is the Library’s resource discovery tool and allows you to search the Library’s Catalogue, e-journals and licensed collections i.e. what the Library owns and subscribes to, all in one search. It also lets you search beyond what the Library has in its collections and discover other resources and material that may be relevant to your research.

There are search boxes for Searcher on the Library homepage and in the Library tab on MyEd but you can also access Searcher at http://searcher.is.ed.ac.uk/

As of 1st April 2014, when you first do your search, Searcher will limit your results to All Library Resources, which includes print books, ebooks, ejournals and database content. You can narrow this to searching just the Library Catalogue (only results which appear in the Library Catalogue will display, this includes books, ebooks and ejournal titles but NOT ejournal content) or expand this to search out with the Library’s collections.

There are Basic and Advanced search options, various limiters are available to refine your search results, you can create your own account to save searches and results, and there are options for downloading/saving references.

Where full-text is available to you online then there will be a link to go straight through to this, the link may be slightly different depending on the source of the search result. Look out for the following links Click here for full text, PDF Full Text, HTML Full Text or findit@edinburgh.

More information about using Searcher can be found at learn more about Searcher. See also Searcher: BIG change.

If you find a book in the Library that is already out on loan (Not Available) then you can click on the Retrieve Catalogue Item link to place a request on the book – Requesting an item which is on loan.

If you find material that is not available within the Library’s collections then you may want to consider requesting the material via the Inter-Library Loans service, or visiting another library to access the material or in the case of a book you may wish to recommend this is purchased for the Library – Book recommendations.

If you want to do a more focused search in your subject area or are looking looking for material most relevant to your topic then you should use some of the online databases the Library subscribes to. Find these by subject area or through the Subject Guides.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for Social and Political Science.

SPS Librarian

Academic Support Librarians for staff & students in the School of Social and Political Science blogging on Library resources, services and skills.

Researching Africa? Explore new resources @UniofEdinburgh

Better together or better apart? Some useful resources on the Scottish referendum.

European Parliament elections 2014 – suggested resources for your research

New e-resources trials available

Searching Searcher – discovering the Library’s resources